Lakers vs. Trail Blazers Game 5 to be played on Saturday

After having their game postponed as players engaged in a wildcat strike to protest police brutality and systemic racism this week, the Los Angeles Lakers and Portland Trail Blazers will play Game 5 of their first-round series in the NBA playoffs on Saturday, Aug. 29 at 6:00 p.m. PT, the league announced.

Game 5 will be televised nationally on TNT, and locally on Spectrum SportsNet.

Tania Ganguli of the Los Angeles Times was the first to report that the Lakers and Blazers were expected to resume their series on Saturday. The Lakers are set to return to practice for the first time since the impromptu strike on Friday, and they will address the media for the first time since all of this happened there.

The Lakers currently have a 3-1 lead over Portland in the series, and will be looking to close things out and move on to the second round with a victory in Game 5. Blazers star Damian Lillard has already been declared out for the contest, and will likely miss the entire series after leaving the NBA bubble for further examination of his sprained knee. The Lakers’ injury situation is unknown as of the publishing of this story, although with a few more days to rest his back spasms, there would seem to be at least a chance that guard Rajon Rondo is able to make his return in this one.

Without Lillard, the Blazers wouldn’t appear to have a great chance, but anything is possible in one game in the playoffs, especially when we don’t know how the events of the last few days will affect various players on both teams’ readiness to play.

This developing story will be updated with more information.

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